(WPO1c) Professions and Occupations: Continuity, Change, and Challenges

This session explores the different, often challenging, and sometimes contradictory, realities faced by various groups of professionals in Canada. These realities can only be understood within broader institutional, organizational, structural, and regulatory contexts. Papers in this session address issues such as: the difficulties confronting health professionals with the accelerating pace of change to the profession; the unique professional path and knowledge production practices and expectations of economists in academia; and, the experiences of Black early childhood educators as they navigate the anti-Black racism with which they and the children in their care are confronted. Collectively, the papers point to the need to develop more nuanced analyses of professionals and their workplaces, and to understand the dynamics of the work of professionals within the ever-changing context of Canadian society. Tags: Travail Et Professions

Organizers: Vivian Shalla, University of Guelph, Tracey L. Adams, University of Western Ontario, Karen Hughes, University of Alberta; Chair: Philip Badawy, University of Alberta

Presentations

Tracey L. Adams, University of Western Ontario

Dilemmas and Challenges of Professional Practice in a Digital Age

The work of health professionals is changing; the pace of change has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, technological and workplace developments, shifting consumer demands, and workforce shortages. This context creates challenges for healthcare professionals, who can face demands for which their training has not entirely prepared them. Regulatory bodies find it difficult to keep codes of ethics and practice guidance sufficiently up-to-date in order to guide practitioners as they navigate this shifting terrain. Changing technology, including expanding applications of artificial intelligence, the growth of virtual practice, and recent disciplinary decisions highlighting professionals’ (mis)use of social media reveal new ethical considerations for healthcare professionals practising today. The persistence of healthcare shortages have prompted organizational and governmental policy shifts that further alter professionals’ work, not only redrawing who does what, but changing the conditions under which professional work is performed. These changes not only bring challenges for professional workers, but also demand new regulatory solutions. This paper explores the practice challenges and ethical dilemmas experienced by health professionals working in Ontario, Canada in a climate of changing workplace demands and new technology. Study data come from three sources. First, we conducted a content analysis of codes of ethics and practice guidance provided by health profession regulators in the province of Ontario to determine the extent to which regulators can support professional workers as they navigate this shifting terrain. Recent case law in this field was also examined. Second, we conducted interviews with a small sample of Ontario health profession regulators to discuss the extent to which recent technological and workplace change is impacting the regulation of professional work, and to identify emergent trends in practice (mis)conduct. Third, we conducted focus groups with health professionals to understand their experiences in the workplace, and hear first-hand about the challenges workplace change is bringing. We conducted thematic analysis across the datasets to develop an understanding of the nature of changes experienced, their impact on professional workers, and their implications for the regulation of professional work. Findings indicate that many regulators have made changes to their codes of ethics and practice guidance to foster ethical professional conduct in a context of change; however, some provide more support than others. Many feel ill-equipped to stay up-to-date with developments in the professional fields they regulate, and/or believe that it is not their role to support practitioners as they navigate the changing terrain. The impact of technological change is altering many aspects of professional practice – but it impacts professionals differently, depending on their work setting and employment status. The extent to which the implementation and application of technology is controlled by the workers or by others (like their employers), is crucially important. Impacts are also variable depending on region and urban-rural locale. In hospital settings the push to do more, and take on new roles that have the potential to increase safety risks to the public is particularly intense. Technological change creates new challenges for professional regulators too as it opens different avenues for professional misconduct, and may facilitate illegal practice. The implications of some workplace and technological changes -- for example, expanding use of artificial intelligence -- are multiple and difficult to predict. The implications of technological change for professional workers and regulatory bodies are considered.

Janelle Brady, Toronto Metropolitan University; Georgiana Mathurin, Toronto Metropolitan University; Aruschga Mohantharajah, Toronto Metropolitan University; Rachel Berman, Toronto Metropolitan University

The role of Black Early Childhood Educators in childcare: On the urgency of addressing systemic anti-Black racism in the field of Early Childhood Education and Care

Ontario is the only province in Canada to have a regulatory body for Early Childhood Education (ECE) under the College of ECEs (CECE), established in 2007, where workers are registered (College of Early Childhood Educators, 2023). Further, Canada has created the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program, which will realize universal $10/day childcare by 2026 (Government of Canada, 2024). ECEs work in a range of early years settings such as licensed and unlicensed childcare, home-based, school settings, and family day programs. Despite these federal changes and professionalization in the field undertaken in 2007, ECEs are underprotected in many scenarios when it comes to wages and working conditions, with few exceptions in fully unionized environments (Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, 2017; Powell and Ferns, 2023). Given this, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a mass exodus from front-line childcare work, as well as less people entering the field (Powell and Ferns, 2023; Powell et al., 2021). Once in the field, systemic barriers are laid bare for Black ECEs who are given fewer opportunities for advancement and promotions (Vickerson, 2023), and who face microaggressions as a symptom of anti-Black racism. Black ECEs not only face these barriers, but witness such unfair conditions imparted on the Black children and families with whom they work alongside in their practice. There are numerous egregious accounts of Black children being more harshly disciplined than their white peers, which is what has led to what some are calling the pre-school-prison pipeline (Bryan, 2020). As such, Black ECEs often take up the mantle in many cases to protect Black children, going above and beyond their job requirements (Grant, 2023). Anti-black racism in the workplace is well-documented and is coming to light across sectors, such as with the Black Class Action federal lawsuit; however, what sets apart Black ECEs is they not only face systemic racism, but they also navigate such inequities being imparted to the children whom they work with, causing a double level of harm. The field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) has embedded assumptions of childhood innocence - that children are too young to learn about race or racism - which leads to colour-blind approaches (Berman et al., 2017; Boutte et al., 2011), ultimately further disenfranchising Black children. Policies and programs also fail to adequately address anti-Black racism in the field. In a recent scan of guiding documents such as How Does Learning Happen (2014), a pedagogical tool developed by the Ministry of Education along with other leading documents in the field, there is no mention of ‘Black’, ‘Blackness’, or ‘anti-Black racism’; instead Black and racialized experience is often collapsed to ‘culture’ which perpetuates further harm by not explicitly naming race or racism. This presentation is part of a larger study, Honouring Black Refusals, which gathers the lived experiences and counterstories of Black Elders, Black ECEs, and Black Mothers. Based on 10 semi-structured interviews, the presenters employ Black Feminisms and Critical Race Theory to explore the system navigation strategies, working conditions, and commitment to creating pro-Black classrooms of Black ECEs, which not only support Black children and families, but all communities from intersectional identities. In all, the presenters highlight the need to not only address wage inequities, but also to layer these with pro-Black intersectional analyses of power to better support entry and retention in the field.